Reading involves the identification and localization of three key elements, according to S. Fowler in his paper on visual problems associated with reading and spelling difficulties, Information Sheet Number 5, Professional Association of Teachers of Students with Specific Learning Difficulties (2000). These key elements are (1) visual reference points for the lines involved in letter construction, (2) memory of what is seen, followed by (3), the association of meaning and language.
Smooth eye movement is essential for successful readers, according to D. A. Robinson in Neurophysiology of Eye Movements, Annual Review, Neuroscience 4, pages 463-503 (1981). He determined that the control of saccades, which is a rapid movement of the eye as it changes focus from one point to another, for example, while reading, and smooth pursuit, fixation and convergence, i.e., a coming together from different directions, play an important part in producing a stable image of the word on the page and enable smooth tracking of the eyes along a line of print. Thus, the accurate control of involuntary, i.e., jump, eye movements and of smooth, continuous eye movements is necessary for reading.
Princeton University's Dr. George A. Miller in an article in The Psychological Review entitled “The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two: Some Limits on Our Capacity for Processing Information” (1956) explored the optimal amount of information that a person's short-term memory could receive and effectively process. After analyzing a variety of experiments on the capacity of people to transmit information, Dr. Miller concluded that the amount of information or “variance” which humans most successfully process is “seven, plus or minus two” or, in other words, five to nine units, or “chunks,” of information at one time.
Subsequently, A. J. Wilkins and Nimmo-Smith published the results of their study on the reduction of eyestrain in Ophthalmic and Physiological Optics (1) at pages 53-59 (1984). They reported: “Some children and adults with or without reading problems complain of glare of the black print against the white background [or] light shining on white rather than blackboards. Basically the background appears to interfere with the print. They may see patterns in the gaps between line and words, which can be distracting [and] can cause headache and migraines (sic).”
More recently, in the study which I. Iovino, J. M. Fletcher, B. G. Breitmeyer and B. R. Foorman published in 1998 in the Journal of Clinical and Experimental Neuropsychology, Vol. 20, No. 6, pages 791-806, a study which was grounded in the Wilkins and Nimmo-Smith work, the authors discovered that the individuals in their research who were sensitive as they read to glare or print against a light background more often chose a blue/mauve (end of the color spectrum) overlay to help them as they read. Both they and Fowler concluded that “Blue not only appears to reduce glare, but also the apparent motion of the print.”
Very recent studies analyzing the role of attention in absorbing information which appears in printed material are reported by Kowler Ph. D., of Rutgers University's Department of Psychology in New Encyclopedia of Neuroscience (2006). She concludes that “Eye movements are inextricably linked to visual attention because both are the principal tools available for selecting interesting portions of visual scenes for enhanced perceptual and cognitive processing.” She concludes also that “The picture of saccades and attention that emerges from the psychophysical and behavior studies . . . which is in agreement with neurophysiological work, is that saccades and attention normally operate in a connected fashion, with saccades landing at the object that is the main focus of attention. Nevertheless, attending to the goal of saccades still allows perceptual processing at different locations, perhaps with the aid of other mechanisms that passively distribute attention to relevant locations in parallel across the visual array.”
Various issued patents disclose aids which utilize viewing windows or viewing strips to direct eye movement. They are addressed to devices for specific situations such as viewing computer printouts or tables, or to several forms of training devices. One of the former is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 3,739,739, issued in 1973. It describes a flexible strip which incorporates a crystal clear band extending from one end of the strip to the other. Preferably, the strip is longer than fifteen inches in order to extend the full width of a computer printout and beyond. The ends of the strip project out from the edges of the printout so that they can be gripped by the user as he moves down the page. Dark stripes border the band along its top and bottom edges and focus attention on the material within the band. Another type of strip is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,024,831, issued in 1977, describing a transparent ruler having a central colored strip throughout its length arranged between scales which are located along the top and bottom edges of the ruler. Optionally, one of the scales may be replaced by a tinted section, and in that case the center strip is bordered by lines of a contrasting color. Flexible forms of overlays are described in U.S. Pat. No. 5,950,560 which issued in 1999. In that patent, transparent colored bands of film covering several lines of text are disclosed, pink, orange, yellow, blue, violet, green, sky blue, etc., and the reader selects which one or ones are the least troublesome as he reads. Another device, a line finder for typists, is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 1,658,499 which issued in 1928. That patent describes a plate of glass, preferably about ¼″ thick, which has a line on its undersurface created by painting the lower half of the plate with a transparent coloring material such as green French varnish.
Among the training devices which are disclosed in the patent art, U.S. Pat. No. 3,982,332, issued in 1976, describes a transparent jacket which holds opaque cards, each one having a horizontal slot. The slot may be moved down a column of short letter groups at various speeds to train a user's eye and comprehension. When one speed or group size has been mastered, a longer slot and a longer letter group may be used. Other windows with various opaque bordering elements are disclosed in U.S. Pat. Nos. 140,135; 3,408,977; 3,704,533; 3,982,332; 4,016,659; and 4,641,444.
A similar window card is described in U.S. Pat. No. 5,458,376 which issued in 1995. That card facilitates reading data on a newspaper page containing columns of stock market information. A series of headings which duplicate the headings at the top of the newspaper page, i.e., “abbreviation,” “52 wk. high,” “52 wk. low,” etc., is arranged horizontally across the card above the window, and a transparent vertical area along the edge of the card permits the user to align the window in the card with the identity of the stock which he selects. The advantage of the card is to bring the generalized headings for the data at the top of the newspaper page into immediate proximity to the specific data for a particular stock.
Against this background, it is an object of the present invention to provide an instructive tool which has demonstrated its effectiveness in making reading a page of text easier for the user, and also of making the author's expressed thought more absorbable for the user.
It is a further object of this invention to provide a reading tool which is inexpensive and which can be widely distributed to school children, and which is also capable of being deftly handled by children who are young, beginning readers.
It is a further object of this invention to provide a reading tool which is arranged to focus a user's attention on an absorbable group of words on a page of text and direct that attention smoothly to a following group of words on that page.
It is a further object of this invention to provide a reading tool which concentrates a focused view on a specific group of words in a line of text on a page.
It is a further object of this invention to provide a physical combination of elements in a reading tool which generate a user's eye movement to return to a just read group of words quickly, easily, and without conscious effort.
These and other objects and advantages of the present invention will be apparent to those of skill in the art in view of the detailed description set forth herein.